Columnist – John Sammon
It’s one of history’s ultimate ironies that a leader who seems intelligent, articulate, who has common sense as well as poise and who is a good politician, good enough to get elected president of the United States, proves inept once in office.

Obama has me shaking my head in wonder as he stumbles from debacle to debacle and his presidency sets sail well on its way to a disaster perhaps rivaling that of George W. Bush.

After the train wreck (for Democrats) of the recent election, Obama left the country for India which opened up accusations of extravagance because of the cost of the trip. Once in India, he alluded to trade agreements that he said would help fix the joblessness that has turned entire sections of the U.S. into virtually foreclosed ghost towns.

In other words, we’re going to receive aid from India in almost the guise of a supplicant, a junior partner to an Asian country which because of corporate greed taking advantage of low wages, we have farmed out thousands of our own jobs. We almost appear to be desperate, which is how Obama at times seemed, while at other times he seemed crestfallen during the recent G2 Conference.

This came after Obama all but admitted mistakes to the American people and said “course corrections” were needed. This kind of candor nevertheless weakened his presidency still further.

Earlier in a column I called attention to Jackie Robinson, the first black big league baseball player, and Obama, the first black president. Both men had racists screaming for their blood, Robinson from fans in the stands, the opposing team and his own teammates, and Obama from Tea Party meetings across the country.

Robinson faced up to the pressure and silenced the racists by becoming one of the great ball players. At this point it doesn’t look like Obama will do the same. His support particularly from moderates and the undecided and non-Republicans is eroding and he is already perceived as a failure by a growing number.

Republicans have a stronger hold on Congress now. What miracle can Obama pull off in the next two years to get reelected?

I haven’t got an answer. I would urge him to pursue humanitarian causes to try and gain sympathy.

But history will judge that he made two critical mistakes.

One is related to the other.

THE ABILITY TO PRIORITIZE! Obama allowed much of his first term to be taken up with an exhaustive debate, battle and vote over a health care package—–while joblessness festered.

This was much the same as Bush fighting in Iraq and allowing the situation in Afghanistan to fester. Old Russian proverb. If you try to catch two rabbits at the same time, you catch neither one.

Joblessness should have been first priority, not heath care. Once the economy is fixed, a president riding the wave of popularity because of it could then tackle health care with the momentum of popularity in his favor in a second term after being reelected (people are grateful because they’re back to work).

Health care was passed in a watered down version, which Republicans will dismantle. But it allowed Obama’s opponents to rally around a lightening rod highly symbolic issue. Working Americans wouldn’t listen as much to the charges of “socialism.”

A year ago, the president should have gone on television in a series of appearances and appealed directly to the American people explaining to them the gravity of the jobs situation like Franklyn D. Roosevelt did with his famous fireside radio chats, asking for their help—directly.

Obama also unfortunately continued two endless blood and money-down-the-drain-hole wars begun by his predecessor Bush and Cheney.

Most people don’t care too much about wars, but being out of work and losing their homes is more critical to them than even health care. Look again at history. Lyndon Johnson tried to implement The Great Society and an open-ended war in Vietnam at the same time. He accomplished neither (remember the Russian rabbits).

Unless Obama can override Republican resurgence, he has failed to become a political Joe Louis or Jackie Robinson, and his 11th hour has struck.

The first black president a failure?

It’s too painful to contemplate.

Copyright 2010 Sammonsays.

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Republican Dirty Tricks: Once considered liberal and progressive, the Republican Party has been taken over by right-wing conservative con artists who lie, cheat and steal to gain and maintain power. From voter fraud and suppression to smear campaigns, personal attacks and media manipulation, they have been using the same strategies for more than a hundred years.

While Democratic Dirty Tricks prominently show up around FDR’s first election in ’32, Kennedy/Nixon (Chicago) in ’60 and Lyndon Johnson in ’64, these lead to The New Deal, Social Security and Civil Rights while Republican Dirty Tricks give us depressions, poverty and massive national debt.

Republicans know if most people vote, they would never win so they try to demoralize the Democratic base and suppress the vote as much as possible, they buy some people off with tax cuts and scare the rest into voting against their own interests and that’s how they win. It’s a divide and conquer strategy that has worked well and they refine and expand it every election year. [ READ MORE ]

   Glenn Beck’s Fascist Chalk Board [ ENLARGE ]

Democrats Outclassed at Dirty Tricks

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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On Monday morning, President Barack Obama ratcheted up his attacks against insurance companies in a last-ditch attempt to get a reluctant public and skittish Democrats behind his health overhaul legislation. [ FULL STORY ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bonus Video: The first couple welcomed guests to the White House on Monday, marking International Women’s Day. Mrs. Obama looked ravishing in a grey draped dress by Lanvin. [ READ MORE ]

Republican Goon-LIARS Respond:

Fox News’ Special Report, chief White House correspondent Major Garrett falsely claimed that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had not found projected savings under the Senate health bill to be “meaningful” in its second decade. In fact, CBO estimated that the bill would reduce the deficit in its second decade. [ READ MORE ]

Meanwhile, conservative media cast Democrats as “suicide bombers” in push for health care reform: Reacting to progress on health care reform legislation, conservative media figures have repeatedly referred to President Obama and Democratic officials as “health care suicide bombers” and characterized their efforts to pass a bill as “a Kamikaze mission” and “political suicide missions.”[ READ MORE ]

Fox’s Garrett distorted CBO findings on long-term savings under Senate health bill

Rush Limbaugh Promises To “Leav[e] The Country” If His Health Care Distortions Come True

Hannity & Dick Morris: “People stopped [health care reform] up to this point and I think they’ve got to now finish the job”

Limbaugh repeatedly refers to “Democrat” Party as “a gulag“

Rush’s new theory: Senate health care bill will lead to “250 million uninsured“

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   Columnist – John Sammon
The Republican Party, the party of obstruction, the party of “NO,” the party of the status quo, big oil, big insurance, big numbers of uninsured, big wars against small poor countries, has got Obama where they want him.

Obama is no Lyndon Johnson, and this isn’t 1964. He might have to be satisfied in the end with being more like baseball player Jackie Robinson.

That might be enough.

The measure of any presidential administration is its accomplishments. The Republicans have just enough clout in the Congress to vote down anything Obama is trying to do. Thus, health care reform appears headed for the dumpster, or to be watered down to please Republicans to the point it isn’t reform at all. The Republicans say they have a plan. Their plan is as usual no plan, to do nothing. That’s their plan.

In recent weeks Obama has been applying the carrot-and-stick approach, alternately scolding the Republicans on one hand for their refusal to cooperate, and then pleading with them (the carrot) to be reasonable. He wants to hold a summit meeting with Republicans to try and iron out the differences. Good luck.

Reasonable? The Republicans?

Back in the old days when the Republican Party had human beings in it like Nelson Rockefeller, they might have at least listened. But today the party is led by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. They must love this. They can sit back and do what they do best, whine and complain and criticize, and savor Obama’s losing attempts to pass health care reform.

Time goes by and the American people come to blame Obama for not fixing problems the Republicans helped mightily to create.

In 1964, LBJ had enough support in Congress to push through Civil Rights legislation. If the Republican Party had been then as they are now, we could conceivably still have segregated schools. LBJ was also a bulldog, not adverse to calling people “assholes” over the phone if they didn’t vote the way he wanted, his manner at times that of a borderline thug. You thought he might lift you by your ears like he did his beagle dogs if you didn’t see it his way.

Obama on the other hand is a highly intelligent, cultured and gentile man who tries to appeal to reason and the best in people, as Lincoln once put it, “the better angels of our nature.”

You can’t reason with a gang of zealots like the Republicans.

Obama is in a catch-22. If he chastises the Republicans, they love it. If he pleads with them for help, they laugh and say he’s a worm. Obama needs to hold tight to his pride and not give in to them.

In the end, I believe that Obama will be a one-term president without major accomplishments because of this obstructionism. He’ll have to be another Jackie Robinson.

Jackie Robinson was not the greatest baseball player, but he did something far more important than merely swinging a piece of wood at a ball and running over bags in a circle. He was the first black Big League ballplayer and had to stand up to the most vile racist taunts and disgusting perverted abuse from white hecklers, which showed for all to see the real America. The America of the Republicans.

A lone man, with the pressures on him to play ball well so the bad guys wouldn’t triumph and be able to say, “see I told ya’ niggers don’t belong here.” No other player had to endure this, catcalls and taunts from the stands about himself, his wife and mother. He took it without screaming back or falling apart. That he did so with courage and dignity showed how much bigger, how much greater a man he was than his detractors.

It still hurt. I have no doubt that this harrowing experience helped to shorten his life.

If Obama ends up accomplishing very little because the heckling teabag Republican idiots want to sit in the figurative bleachers and jeer, he still did something far more valuable for the country. He was the first African American president, and showed millions of others of his color they have a chance to be something more than a second-class citizen.

Like Jackie Robinson, Obama showed the way.

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They will speak of peace and wage war
They will wage war and call it peace
They will mercilessly wage war
and be hailed as peacemakers

Never in history anywhere in the world have leaders waged war not believing it to be a noble cause. And of course, wars are usually waged against infidels and against evil in the name of God. Now, President Barack Obama appears to have joined those ranks. Truthfully, he has not joined the brutes of history, i.e., Ghengis Khan or Caligula. Instead, in maters of war, he has become quintessentially American. He has followed in the footsteps of James Polk, Teddy Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and most remarkably, his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, in continuing to wage wars of aggression under false pretenses. And like his named predecessors, he will escalate the war(s) to end the war(s).

And now, back to the Tiger Woods saga, or better yet, to things that really matter. For instance, whatever happened to balloon boy? And how is Sarah Palin’s book tour coming along?

That seems to be the focus and attention span of American media. More time is spent on covering sex scandals, reality TV and its flight-by-night stars and empty headed celebrities than on the story of our times: the American assertion of the right to wage worldwide permanent war. The president is not only engaged in a costly war in Iraq, but is also escalating the war in Afghanistan. Worse, he is also laying the foundation for a third war in Pakistan.

His acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize was a scene straight out of the Twilight Zone. Rather than speak of peace, he made the case for war… for so-called just war. Every tin pot dictator and warmonger around the world was pleased. At home, right wing politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove and even Sarah Palin herself heaped extraordinary praise on the Commander-in-Chief.

Mind-boggling.

And as noted, the news cycle has moved on. The war(s) is no longer an issue, even though the country cannot afford to wage them. Yet in poetic language, the president has defended and sanctioned his predecessor’s war policies, no less, during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. And not surprisingly, the right wing is pleased.

Apparently, defending the notion of a -just war- does not include denouncing unjust wars by name: Iraq.

There are unjust, illegal and immoral wars and all of them spell Iraq.

Yet, the president could not get himself to name Iraq. Truthfully, had he done so, it would have exposed the past administration to the International War Crimes Tribunal and other courts of justice. Not mentioning Iraq does not absolve or insulate the past administration from criminal or legal claims at the Tribunal. It only gives them protection and cover during the tenure of the current administration.

No president anywhere can make an illegal war legal, moral or just.

It was bad enough that the president was nominated for this prize while waging two wars and while calling for escalation in Afghanistan, but worse is that he obscenely justified war, while receiving this prize.

Perhaps at fault here is not the president, but rather, the committee that bestowed him this honor. What were they thinking? It is obvious; Bush raised worldwide tension every time he spoke arrogantly of war, of fighting evil and doing so in the name of God. The world frowned upon this Texas cowboy.

Now, they have embraced president Obama. He speaks of peace but wages war. At least he’s not Bush.

President Obama gives credibility to war. Gives it a good name. He speaks of committing more troops as though he were sending Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and Peace Corps volunteers overseas. His eloquent talk permits U.S. troops to continue to kill by the thousands, including through the use of unmanned drone technology. No blood on anyone’s hands here. His smooth talk makes easy their dehumanization. He calls them incorrigibles. His predecessor called them evil. He calls them evil. As long as not too many Americans are killed on the battlefield, the sanitized wars will continue. And the wars will continue until the nation’s enemies resemble us, until everyone shares our values and partakes in our customs, until they all speak English and pray to a Christian God.

Blessed are the Warmakers.

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